Society,
We Have A Problem
Robert H. Outman
In
the aerospace industry, excellence is expected because that industry consumes
billions of tax dollars and is responsible for public safety and people's
lives. Therefore, standards are high, with quality control maintained
through vigorous checks, counter checks, evaluations, analyses, transparency,
and progressive insight that prevents problems before they occur.
It is an industry that minimizes the need for the call "Houston, we have
a problem". However, when such a call comes, a logical and efficient
solution is quickly at hand. It is an industry with a nearly impeccable
record.
Antithetical
to the excellence of the aerospace industry is the California Department
of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), which also consumes billions
of tax dollars and is responsible for public safety and people's lives.
The CDCR has a failure rate of a 70% return of its product — rehabilitated
prisoners. NASA can put men in space and on the moon but CDCR can't
rehabilitate men sufficiently to keep them from returning to prison.
Year
after year the aerospace industry advances through progressive and intellectual
insight, knowing there is a better way. CDCR builds more prisons,
hires more guards, and says it is considering change. When the aerospace
industry recognizes a design flaw or procedural error, failure analysis
is employed to remedy the failure. CDCR denies the problem, builds
more prisons, hires more guards, and says it will consider change.
People
willingly pay those billions of tax dollars to assure high quality performance
of the aerospace industry. That industry provides excellence.
Year after year, CDCR falls miserably short of improving its record and,
amazingly, people except it as normal. "Corrections and Rehabilitation"
does not extend beyond the title.
The
Wright brothers pioneered aviation early in the 20th century and, 100 years
later, man is planning to travel to Mars. Long before the 15th century's
infamous Inquisition, men imprisoned and tortured others for aberrant behavior
under the guise of punishment and rehabilitation. The mentally ill
were housed in asylums where they were tormented, tortured, and left to
undignified deaths. Witches and heretics were burned at the stake.
Today, progress is represented mostly by more humane techniques of execution,
such as lethal injections, electric chairs, firing squads, and slow death
by brutally long sentences.
Progress,
innovation, and truth rarely come out of governmental secrecy. Even
military operations are conducted with imbedded reporters, yet CDCR attempts
to restrict reporters, control media visits, and limit news releases.
CDCR enforces a policy whereby benign prisoners are forced to room with
violent ones, resulting in a lot of dead and brutally beaten prisoners.
Members of society are not privy to activities in prisons without CDCR
attempting to control the information. As an example, mentally ill
35-year-old prisoner Joseph Duran, soaked in pepper spray, was left to
die an undignified death on the concrete floor of his cell. His family
didn't learn the truth about his death until after a reporter started to
ask questions, four months later. In some ways, prisons are still
in the dark ages.
Dr.
Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., studied prisons and their impact. In his
book The Lucifer Effect, he observed, "A system designed to combat
evil, creates evil." Existing in the belly of one of CDCR's penological
beasts, as I do, I have witnessed through the years empirical proof that
Zimbardo is right. It does not bode well for man's progress in the
science of "rehabilitation".
The
federal court has recognized CDCR's failures and ordered change.
CDCR continues to make empty pledges to change. The court continues
to grant extensions. Without true transparency as to what is going
on behind these lethal electric fences, change will never come. The
call, "Society, we have a problem", will never be answered.
Stray Thoughts
Sam Aurelius Milam III
• I
don't think that it's possible to abolish government but it might be possible
to force governments to acknowledge personal sovereignty.
• No
matter how much forgiveness there is in the world, we must still live with
the consequences of what was done. Forgiveness doesn't change the
past. It might change the future.
• The
expiration date on a package of food isn't there to protect the consumer.
It's there to protect the manufacturer.
• This
planet is capable of recovering from anything that we're capable of doing
to it.
November 2014 |
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